<>: ' 



i 



LIBRARY OF^ONGRESS. 

Shelf <V_3.£Z 

i. 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



»«a7# •.**>* 



S3*&^ 



WEmk* 



PHANTOMS OF LIFE 



BY 



LUTHER DANA WATERMAN 



JUL 21 1383/ 



NEW YORK 
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

27 & 29 WEST 23D STREET 
1883 



I 5"] 
I? 



Copyright by 
LUTHER DANA WATERMAN 



Press of 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

27 &= 29 W. 23a' St. 



PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 



I. 
WOULD unclasp a fibre of life's pain 
By giving glimpses to the soul beguiled 
Of that fair land whose boundaries lie far down 
In the wild world that colors all our dreams, 
Far-dwelling, fragrant, flowery, and bedewed, 
Beyond the ken of day ; but whither yet 
The heart will yearn with instinct unappeased 
As yearns the child for its dead mother's breast, 
And with a faith that 's stronger than all sense, 
Than reason clearer, longer-lived than will, 
Despite the frigid clay that wraps this life 
And all the poisoned passions that betray, 
The soul sends out frail gossamers of hope 
To catch the radiance of that unknown clime 
And thrill with the unheard music of its shores. 
Oh ! if the autumn bud within its husk 
Has felt a prescience of the summer come 
And swelled impulsive with a fragrant hope, 



2 PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 

Why, why may not the soul, by earth bedimmed, 
In inmost centre of its consciousness 
Glow with a transient gleam of happier lands 
And melt with mellow music heard by hope ? 

II. 

As soars the summer lark high into heaven 

It pours a-down to earth with all its soul 

The melody it catches as it goes 

Above the din of this discordant world ; 

So one as striving up toward truth he goes, 

With laboring soul that knows but that it moves 

Onward and upward and godward for aye, 

Should tell the new stars that his eye can see ; 

Should pass the watchword of the sentinel 

That ever sings upon the battlements 

That look o'er man's existence " all is well " ; 

Should with his song tell all who sleep below 

That morn is near, and seen from his clear height, 

And known by sheen of its ethereal spear ; 

And give the music and the morning song 

Of his soul's heavenward aspiration pure 

To sweetly all the dawn below attune. 



PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 



III. 



Oh ! ever nearer, clearer to the soul 

Are heard the harmonies divine of heaven, 

And dimmer the infernal discords grow. 

New starry truths are visible above ; 

Far more unmixed and purer is the song 

Creation sings around the central throne ; 

And pure its echo from the furthest bound ; 

Sweet voice of answer from the outmost thing 

That living glows in space's utmost verge. 

O'er all the discord of this striving world 

Floats higher concord, subtle yet distinct, 

Of which earth's murmur makes a faint sweet note. 

There comes dim vision of the transformed world 

When it and man are sunned with truth's full smile ; 

And o'er the conscious soul there gently breathes 

The flowing ether that forever bears 

All nature, on its bosom, toward its aim. 



PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 



IV. 



The poet makes a world out of the best 

Of all the world he lives in ; peoples it 

With the best ones of all the souls he loves, 

Honors, or worships ; colors it with all 

The gathered gleams of earth's dim beauty felt ; 

And atmosphered with hope and sunned with love, 

In wandering orbit dimly seen of life 

He courses the serene of heaven in faith ; 

And listens ever far beyond his ear 

To catch the harmonies within his soul ; 

Himself the sole possessor and the lord 

Of golden realms wide-lying in his sight — 

The land of poesy, that has not been, 

Yet islanded from life but by a thought ; — 

The glimpse of life to pure souls possible, 

Where hearts that sorrow for the evil growths 

That ever spring from the untilled soil of mind, 

May enter musing in a robe of thought 

Invisible, and hold commune with hope. 



PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 5 

V. 
Thus every soul an unknown kingdom has, 
With magic music heard but by itself ; 
And lives thus castled in its phantom world 
Of fact and fancy blent and built by hope. 
It treads the pastures of its winding vale, 
'Neath the blue beauty of the boundless air, 
And all the scene is vocal with delight : 
The crowded air is swift with forest wings ; 
And shapes of fragile beauty hover round ; 
All things of beauty blend them in his soul ; 
Fruits many-lobed and juicy paint the air ; 
And songs that have a forest echo wild 
Sounded from leafy thickets joyous hold 
The pulsing air in musical suspense. 
Quick fancy sees the drapery of fair forms that 

move 
In the wild measures of a native dance, 
Revealing wanton witchery of shape 
To tempted thought but hiding from the eye : 
Out of its world rise dreamful ladders on 
Which holy thoughts reach heaven and descend. 



6 PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 

It has a realm unseen, but ever shaped 
Of its own wishes from the world around ; 
And lives a liquid life, and shapes itself 
With self-made indentation to its shore. 



VI. 

The truth in its full sweetness measured out 

Is poetry, that sets the labor of our lives 

To music, until work becomes a song 

With a rich lesson in it ; and it gives 

The truthful dreams, that break at midnight hour 

The spirit's solitude, in which it holds 

A mystical communion, converse high 

With the more ethereal world that lies beyond 

The common sight of man ; and hears sweet airs 

By nature breathed upon the chords of life. 

Such poetry is the Sabbath of our thoughts ; 

It ever fills the soul o'erfull of such 

Rich thoughts as come with spring in meadows wild. 



PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 



VII. 

As man shall ripen poetry shall grow ; 

And utter all his soul's high thoughts in song 

Whose tones shall move an eager listening age 

And into harmony their souls convert. 

The poet brings the lofty down to earth ; 

And veiled in sweetness pure philosophy 

Breaks to the common heart of humankind. 

Philosophers are poets, and are led 

By daring reason, that would searching find 

The meaning of existence, up to love. 

The poet, worthy of the dignity, 

Through beauty rises to philosophy 

So pure it knows an angel, though in mask, 

By its sweet mission promptly recognized, 

And lives a helper in its kind intents. 



PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 



VIII. 

Again shall poetry be prophecy 

And higher truth new-winged with melody. 

Will knowledge ever feeling paralyze ? 

Give it again the good and beautiful 

Beneath the ever-changing forms of time ; 

Its theme the golden beam that passing through 

The lingering chaos of this present earth 

Lights into truth and hope the darkness left, 

Revealing unto man his higher aims. 

It must no longer hang a faded flower ; 

But be expression of man's truest hope ; 

The voice within his soul of truths to come ; 

The utterance of the souls who lead the world, 

And cheering shout of victory's approach. 



PHANTOMS OF LIFE, 



IX. 

Thought that is winged for loftiness may catch 

The ravelled end of being in itself 

And trace it through the labyrinth of life 

By its necessity — the law of life ; — 

So from dull clay in fancy call up forms 

Of heaven, and in all living beauty clothe ; 

And see in this uncultured world a trace 

Of primal loveliness to tint its thoughts : 

So carve a rough and unhewn soul by love 

To life's full statured majesty of mien. 

The rarest glimpse of beauty is a hint 

The heart may seize on, and so travel out 

By subtlest cords of feeling till they reach 

The beautiful of its own inmost wish : 

And souls are thirsting for the beautiful 

As the earth does for summer-evening dews. 



10 PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 



X. 

Man skimming all that has been writ by man 

Must catch it not as habit of the mind, 

But keep its music echoing in his soul ; 

And sip from all things truth as bees from fields 

Get only honey ; and so grow a heart 

That dares to pierce the dust of centuries, 

And veils of purpose woven by mankind, 

To seek the truth even if his hopes should die. 

The reach of earth toward heaven is told 

By the mapped orbit of its highest soul. 

He must go on in earnest pathway straight 

Seeking for heaven, and he shall final find ; 

For it forever does ensphere this world : 

They only miss who hesitate to soar ; 

Whose feet to clay cling with a frantic fear. 



PHANTOMS OF LIFE. IX 



XI. 

Long after earth was made the common eye, 
In purpose purified, could trace the truth 
And beauty in it clear again to God, 
Who lately made it, and so learn His law ; 
But now bright broken gleams alone are left 
That show dim reason ; so the soul must seek 
Now earth has passed its furthest orbit dark 
For truth and glory brightening on ahead. 
The soul that loves the truth has that within 
That makes it priceless : 't is so pure it needs 
But little change to make it angel all : 
It finds on every leaf the written word, 
Divine when once we know the language well. 



12 PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 



XII. 



The narrow bounds of earth's intelligence 

Beside the wideness of his dream-domain 

Is half the lesson man learns here below. 

How sad each new conviction makes the soul 

That just has launched upon an unknown sea 

With fairy-lands of fancy in his hope 

And magic powers of manhood in his arms. 

Ah ! when the richest souls are wrecked, how poor 

And paltry are the fragments strown on shore. 

Yet there are days when to the hopeful soul 

Awaiting for its dreams to verify 

Nought seems impossible that it can name ; 

For action seems all language to outrun, 

And words too slowly shape themselves for deeds. 

Life larger seems and with more meaning full, 

And death the dimming of the eye that opes 

On dazzling vision of far brighter scenes. 



PHANTOMS OF LIFE. l 3 



XIII. 

To him whose hope is lifted up in faith, 

Who sends his aspiration up to heaven, 

There comes the spark that shows the world unseen 

Is kindred in its truths to all we know ; 

But spreads its living vastness far beyond 

The meagre world he touches in this life : 

While of the power that sways the universe, 

He ponders on the shadow of the fringe 

That trembles in creation's darkest void. 

'T is well before the problems of this life 

To stand with soul divested of the false, 

And comprehend them infinite ; and know 

That great and small have origin alike, 

Hid ever in the unfathomable past. 



14 PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 



XIV. 

Stand ever bravely with thy soul uplift 

And passive only to the will of heaven. 

So shalt thou catch the purposes of God 

In silent fervor ere the bolt shall fall ; 

And hold communion with the universe 

By truth's ethereal influence conjoined. 

Fly all thy thoughts toward heaven, and reach 

The electric pulses of the skies, but give 

Them easy passage to the world beneath, 

Lest they o'ercharge thy soul. So shalt thou be 

A link in the completed chain of all, 

At ease to walk in loving sweet suspense 

Between its higher and its lower loves. 



PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 1 5 



XV. 

Man yet shall have more senses than these five, 

And wider revelation of all things 

Than sight or hearing. Now we call it faith, 

Imagination, intuition, hope ; 

These are the embryo wings that form within 

That yet shall bear him far beyond this earth, 

New forms of life and other hopes reveal. 

Around us throng the shadows of great truths, 

And revelations hover o'er our path ; 

They wait for larger sense than man now has, 

To rush upon his soul for evermore. 

The age called golden was but earth lit up 

Afar by dawn of glorious years to be ! 



1 6 PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 



XVI. 

Man once was pure as infancy is pure, 
And earth was beautiful as to a child — 
Clear vision of its order visible. 
But as he questioned what he saw, he lost 
The open meaning that was all it had ; 
And sought it long and blindly science-wise 
Until he reached his childhood-faith again : 
And seeing it, he called himself redeemed. 
And every race kept sacredly the faith, 
But in transmitting it so warped and changed 
Until the truth was not with one but all ; 
And only could be found by joining them : 
So only those whose souls by suffering 
Grew sympathetic with all kinds of men 
Could get from each a part and blend to truth. 



PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 17 



XVII. 

As the true soul that grows with natural growth, 

Assimilating with a love of truth 

Earth-lore, and growing stronger with its years, 

Can wean itself from earth and feed its flame 

From subtler lights than sunshine ; and can lure 

From outward, infinite diviner thoughts 

Than those which come through matter intricate — 

So the spirit ripe in human wisdom finds 

No truth it ever learned in life grow false, 

But only lose itself in countless truths. 

By what of god-like man has in his soul 

He knows to that extent the absolute. 

All life on earth is but the spirit-pulse 

That lends to matter its significance, 

And vitalizes chaos with its touch. 



1 8 PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 



XVIII. 

Philosophy and numbers and high poetry 
Are not mere phantoms of a mortal soul, 
Brief emanations of the life-lit clay. 
They are the radii of the infinite ; 
And mark the limits of the human soul : 
They measure well the power divine in man. 
When dies the man from matter's grosser form, 
And grows the soul too strong for chemistry, 
And takes the purpose from its organed mold, 
And all the life-pulse earthward ebbs again, 
Then man shall lose no knowledge that he wins, 
And only find it less by knowing more ; 
And know it better as he knows the more ; 
And find them parts of nature's spheral whole. 



PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 1 9 



XIX. 

When men first come from blank unconsciousness 

And hunger for mere food, they minister 

To subtler changes and to deeper laws 

Than we can ever know ; they grow as men, 

And the keen wish, the hunger of the soul, 

Obeys a voice as deep as their own lives 

And wondrous as the first of human thought. 

The atoms that now do the work of will 

No more can be mere chemicals ; they have 

Impressed an impulse of affinity ; 

And after but with kindred atoms wed 

To make a soul still greater possible. 

Thus man in living matter so uplifts 

To make conditions capable for growth 

Of grander man than all the years have seen. 



20 PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 



XX. 

Some men see clearest truth by onward sight ; 

Some backward looking through all nature's path. 

This earth is matter's furthest outward growth, 

And truest man the brain-cell of the earth. 

Matter and soul — truth comes to him through both. 

He is combined of all the laws of earth 

And elements in highest form evolved ; 

And intuition gets of nature's will 

By inward impulse of the laws within 

That serve to mark her purposes unchanged : 

So man gets revelation from himself. 

The soul is ever like a vortex vast 

Directed godward, seeking truth for life ; 

And with its many aspirations lures 

The truth to gain its final harmony. 



PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 21 



XXI. 



Thought, flashed on life's stream infinite, could see 

Once chaos thrilled with equilibrium lost. 

Matter for cycles grew more palpable ; 

In ages liquid ; and then solid ; rock, 

Then crystal, plant, and animal, to man. 

Motion was always : motion life ; life change ; 

And with variety the universe. 

So matter once centrifugally fled 

As organizing focal chaos wandering, 

In orb eccentric : its aphelion reached 

In conscious organisms high, it ever tends 

Godward again through many subtle forms, 

Passing adown the steps of wondrous life, 

And closing after it the gates of light ; 

So that no glory, nor the sound of tool 

Awork on worlds behind, can ever reach 

The ear of man, in this world while he dwells. 



22 PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 



XXII. 

From the dark ages, first of human times, 
When appetite was king, and worshipped all, 
Men rose by slow degrees and many falls, 
In blindness laboring, mad and ravenous, 
To see a higher purpose in their lives ; — 
But fitful, dim, and doubtfully at times ; — 
To seek for order and the way to work ; 
To ask for rights and power to keep their gains 
So pared the surface from this cruder life, 
And looked beneath to find the deeper law ; 
And wondrous found it, full of higher laws 
That rule the soul and so rule all things else : — 
Each man epitome of all man learns, 
And type of the completed orb of things. 



PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 2$ 

XXIII. 
Each soul has its high mission it must do, 
Or be a clog upon the cumbered aim 
Of those who strive with far prophetic eye 
To work the time's great purposes. 
The earth is brimmed with evils, and each one 
Calls for stout hearts to wear it beat by beat 
Of hopeful thought till it gives way at last. 
Oh ! that some hand would strike earth's blistered 

rocks 
And bring such gush of sweet reviving joy ! 
We teach machinery to work like hands, 
And thus gain time to further move the world 
Up toward the day when work shall be no more ;. 
When every wind shall blow our words to friends ; 
The waves be all interpreted and talk ; 
The light of day shall carry thoughts of love ; 
The clouds be full of moral meanings fine ; 
And earth be but the base on which for aye 
The monumental man shall live and smile. 
The strong - armed swimmer, his eye sunned with 

hope, 
Can win rich waifs and glorious isles of calm. 



24 PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 



XXIV. 

Man has within his soul the focal laws 
That bind this earth into a perfect whole ; 
The kindred links of nature to the soul, 
Which are as elements, conditions, cause ; 
And as they in the future upward reach 
Must perfect grow in evolution full, 
Till matter shall with spirit wholly blend. 
The universe its cycle must complete, 
In Time's vast vortex evermore involved. 
New constellations ever glow above ; 
Horizons never charted far appear ; 
And man must ever newer reckoning take, 
And learn new modes of guidance or give o'er 
To drift in aimless darkness evermore. 



PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 2$ 



XXV. 
Man must have countless ways to find the truth. 
Enlarge thy thought of revelation's mode. 
For every truth that lights upon thy soul 
Thy latest revelation is on earth. 
Keep thou thy vision from all falsehood free ; 
Thy spirit lifted above all things base, 
That hovering truths may love to light on thee 
And linger welcomed till their work is done. 
Thy aspiration inspiration lures ; 
And ever will the soul awatch and pure 
Observe the earliest radiance of the dawn 
And know the coming day ere earth awakes. 



26 PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 



XXVI. 

The rays of truth that come to reason's eye 

From the far infinite, their only source, 

Must ever seem to reason parallel, 

Converging never toward a primal start. 

Who traces backward one may travel on 

Forever and no contradiction find 

Except he lose his path. All rays at last 

Lead back to truth and touch its wondrous sphere ; 

But only he whose soul is large enough 

To trace them all until they end in truth 

And so reveal its bounds can see the tend 

That leads the reason toward the darkened core 

Eternal of the living final truth. 



PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 2 J 

XXVII. 

Look thou abroad and swear a love for all 

Thou seest, and all thou canst not see, and peace 

Shall canopy thy soul, as full of hopes 

As heaven of stars o'erbends the summer night. 

Who so can comprehend the fulness all 

Of thought that 's hid in that word love, has read 

Life's riddle well and has the key of joy. 

Love is beyond and justice does include ; 

In fullest wisdom only is it found. 

Who hates a thing in all the universe 

Breeds in his soul a life-long discontent. 

To hate is but to suffer ; and to loathe 

A single sweet existence is to mar. 

False love is self echoed by passion back. 

True love goes trembling from the soul for aye, 

Like music from the gates of paradise 

In vibratory sweetness unreturned. 

Twice blest the soul that 's atmosphered in love 

And has no ritual for it. Sweet the joy 

That ripples o'er the common beach of life. 



28 PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 



XXVIII. 

Some spirits spurn the sad inheritance 

Of flesh, and long for immortality ; 

They shun the Eden-lands that earth has given 

For man to dwell in with scant happiness, 

And scale on daring wings the walls of heaven ; 

They thwart the sweet persuasion of the tongue, 

The lure of graceful form, the charm that hangs 

On easy action, and the pleasant bribe 

Of generous features^; and they ever go 

Through all their days in hopes unwed, 

In life misunderstood ; and sail the seas 

Of hope in disappointment — pirate flags 

High at their masts, and death-heads at their prow. 



PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 2g 



XXIX. 

Some are poor morning lives whose break 
Gave many sunrise promises, and had 
A fitful beauty of their own, but lost 
Themselves in gray imperfectness of age. 
Some are forever twilight, and give o'er 
Their days to sadness, silence, solitude ; 
They hear the drip of time's suspended oar 
Useless against the tide ; they hark in vain 
To whisperings from the beyond of life ; 
Hear plaintive cries reproachful, making joy 
A new repentance, and all life 
A sin perpetual, by their timid doubts. 
'T is hard to build a life so toward the sky 
That every part is in the sunshine steeped. 



30 PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 



XXX. 

Some lives are hungry, bloodless, pale, and thin, 
And shun the healthy air of common sports ; 
They strain at mirth, go backward toward joy, 
See but to scorn, and think of but to sneer : 
Like voiceless owls, pale perched aloft in gloom, 
That flap exultant wings when from afar 
They see the taper burning through the night 
That tells where some faint hope yet flickers low. 
Faint phantom things that shudder at the moon 
Fear not the sunlight more than they a laugh. 
The essence of a thousand such condensed 
Contains not one warm, full-pulsed, ruddy joy 
To tune the march of life to thankfulness. 



PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 3 1 



XXXI. 

Some lives are sunshine from the break of thought : 
Their days are one glad noonday light ; their hopes 
From shadows free ; care's vapors all dispersed ; 
They warm the earth around them to such glow 
No mists of sadness may obscure their close ; 
And soften down into a quiet age 
Crowned with a starry loveliness of calm. 
Some, like a funeral torch, with joy shut out, 
Slow burn themselves away in curtained gloom, 
Or soon flare out in desolate rainy streets. 
Some early enter into solitude, 
And take no wish to trace the way by back. 
Some taste of life as of a doubtful drug, 
And ever have at hand an antidote. 



32 PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 



XXXII. 

He who forsakes not fevered forms of life, 
That fill with hopes they cannot gratify, 
Till they become the tyrants of his joys 
And leave life void because it has no aim 
Is worth the stretching of the hand to pluck — 
At last must lift life's merry mask to find 
A crumbling statue turning into clay. 
Such never weave from threads of joy a web 
To catch the flying wings of happiness. 
Such lives are ever parallel with truth, 
And shadowed by her influence they go on, 
And glow with radiance from her golden goal, 
Till the end comes and finds them landed not 
Within the wished-for portals of her bliss. 



PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 33 



XXXIII. 

This earth is real and this life is true ; 
And worth a brood of distant suns to him 
Who cannot weigh one breath of this he has 
With countless ages of some other one. 
Its summer lost, no gold can gild this life. 
So strive to pass thy days for all their worth, 
And sing thy song with unobstructed throat, 
And pause in silence more melodious still. 
The soul that feeds itself on phantom hopes 
And finds no charm in russet cheeks of health, 
The currents of its life all inward turned, 
Deludes itself forever with base forms 
By having not calm purposes of faith 
That fearless walk the waters of this earth 
Despite the surge that frets their steadfast feet. 



34 PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 



XXXIV. 

This earth's society might better be ; 

Yet greater liberty of love and hate 

Would end in anarchy and loss of all. 

Earth is not ready for the law of love ; 

Its aim must justice be until it wins. 

But love and justice ultimate are one ; 

And he alone can love whom wisdom shows 

That wrong to aught is ever wrong to self. 

The grandest justice is with pity one ; 

No hand should smite until 't is wet with tears. 

Who seeks the truth seeks God, for He is truth. 

Who aims at good and loves his fellow-men 

Is by the fact embassador of Heaven. 



PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 35 



XXXV. 

Life has more meaning in it than all griefs 

And loves and hates and happiness can count. 

'T is not in nature, either part or all, 

To comprehend itself to destiny. 

There is a realm outlying consciousness, 

Not claimed by title writ by human ken. 

This life an earthside and a heavenside has : 

No truth will come from either if alone. 

Man should walk wakeful through the glaring day. 

With ear attentive to the mystic worlds 

That lie beyond in infinite expanse, 

And color life as either most prevails. 



$6 PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 



XXXVI. 

Matter and spirit are but branches both 
That trace themselves to God, than either more. 
When man has in assimilation grown, 
He shall know more than now by being more. 
Till when let men look forward hopefully ; 
And as the music of creation's aim, — 
The hymn of life that rose and falls with time- 
Swells louder to their souls, so yield them up 
That all their purposes and thoughts and deeds 
Arrange themselves with daily growth of power 
To harmony with all the universe ; 
Till soul and body be one conscious cord 
Responsive to the purposes that made. 



PHANTOMS OF LIFE. Z7 



XXXVII. 

All knowledge the relation is the parts 

Each other bear, and toward the whole sustain. 

Man's reason its own limits can discern, 

And conscious be in its extremest verge ; 

He cannot cease until he knows himself ; 

And self will strive until 't is merged in all. 

When to their utmost reach he knows his thoughts, 

His aspiration will be satisfied, 

And his whole prayer will final answer gain ; 

Then echo from without of voice that forms 

Will swell with sympathy his song on earth ; 

And knowledge lose itself in boundless faith. 



38 PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 



XXXVIII. 

We see the earth descend in beauty's form, 
And know it but in some material sense 
From the unknown looming by the path of law. 
Hope leans us ever toward knowing more ; 
So shuns the loss of living consciousness. 
The lesson is far short of final truth 
Within man's reach in this his earthly life, 
That teaches him to cast this life as nought 
To find the happiness so missed beyond. 
There is no element of all this earth, 
Atom or crystal, worm or man, can fail 
Of its allotted labor and not jar 
The ordered purpose of the universe 
Out of its groove and chaos bring again. 



PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 39 



XXXIX. 

The'arts are gone that conquered nature first : 

When we have bowed us to her laws at last, 

And implements that help lie cast away, 

As broken shells where once the young eagle rose, 

Then art shall minister man's higher needs, 

And bring earth's beauty out so plain the blind 

May see a glimpse of her first loveliness. 

Things that are writ are worthless unless made 

Into the blood and brain of daily life : 

The good are grown of earth's great pulse a part ; 

So leave their impress on the deeds of men. 



40 PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 



XL. 

Take life as it is given, and not repine 
That nature seems with stinted hand to give. 
The gift that breedeth love is like a mine, 
Richer the more you search it. Joy to live ; 
And with a cheerful soul sing on the flowers 
That earth outspreads in life's sweet morning hours. 
The soul should be a fountain where all thoughts 
When bathed should ever beautiful come forth. 
To rightly think of nature is to pray. 
Who lives for life existence well rewards. 
Who has truth's living spark within his soul 
Can fearless thread the darkness of this world, 
And by its radiance pass the gates of death ; 
And find it brighten as life less obscures, 
To burn in beauty in the realms beyond. 



PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 41 



XLI. 

Life has no aim above the growth of soul. 
This life is not in vain that teaches well 
The value of the soul beside all else. 
For as an atom moves the very globe 
When falling toward it, so one soul is of 
Proportioned value in the all of things. 
Soul-culture is the purpose of this life ; 
The harvest is all lost that ripes it not ; 
And science with a thousand shafts of light 
The place and poise of man in nature shows 
So correspondent with the universe, 
In pole with pole, the currents all divine 
Can pass unhindered through his willing soul. 
And there are days when the soul's atmosphere 
Is grown so clear the truth is visible. 



42 PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 



XLII. 

Wouldst thou be angel-worker of the truth, 
To sweetness and sublimity give voice ; 
And by the atmosphere and tone of love, 
Whose touch gives beauty to the rudest things, 
Transfigure life to justice and to joy. 
So fill thy season men shall say thou wert 
A spirit in whose mould there was the cast 
Of nations ; and within thy soul there dwelt 
The loftiness of purpose that looks o'er 
The stormy passions of the race and sees 
The steadfast nature that is far beyond ; 
A pioneer of hope in spirit pure 
Of prophecy, who stopped in wilds and turned 
The sod of happier realms that yet shall be. 



PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 43 



XLIII. 

To him who labors in the cause of truth 

And sees its orb grow brighter as he works, 

There is no failure, save that he may have 

His hopes too large for all his power and time. 

Let him who knows his aims are truly good 

Exult, for triumph on him ever waits, 

And every passing moment crowns his life 

With conscious victory that greater grows. 

The agitation that seems fiercely bent 

The tree of social culture to uproot 

Has those who represent it blind as moles, 

Each burrowing for himself in search of wants. 

The moral of existence and the star 

Is well to know what life is and is not. 

'T is what we know, not what we hope, that makes 

Us better in our lives. Far better know 

That we know not, than think we know and miss. 



44 PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 



XLIV. 
God works in kindness ; from earth's Babel sound 
The ear that is well opened for the truth 
Hears oft the sweetest melody of mirth : 
For when the work divine goes on the world 
Is wild with music ; and the words that tell 
Unsyllabled to men are pleasantness. 
Earth passes down the steps of light so bright 
Its radiance makes the unknown beautiful. 
In the true church a harmless laugh is praise ; 
Joy, prayer ; and dancing, worship ; more than 

psalms 
Is music ; and whole-hearted happiness, 
Religion, healthy, sane, o'er whose expanse 
Sweet purposes career. The fuller is the soul 
Of this earth-life, the richer 't is in love. 



PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 45 



XLV. 

Men love the truth, but all know not its garb. 
They seek the true and worship what they find. 
They Justice love but do not know her face, 
And scowl at her inflexibility. 
'T is by a truth and beauty all distort, 
Set in a trap with grim intent of wrong, 
That evil tempts ; for error ne'er allured. 
All things exist by virtue of their good : 
What evil seems in gross has good within. 
Seek out, nor for its evil pass it by : 
So shall you get an antidote for pain 
From stifling weeds that stupefy the air. 



46 PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 



XLVI. 

To-day is but as others practical : 
The present ever does the real seem. 
Religion widens as all else to souls. 
Throughout all time the uttered words of God 
Have been interpreted by needs of men 
And by the voice of nature ; as in days 
When every isle, hill, dale, dell, wood, 
And every leaf-built nook had its air stirred 
By flitting robes of more than human form, 
Fair living shapes of beauty and of good. 
They of old days whose souls were lift 
Above desires that fever foolish flesh 
Saw earth and heaven as near each other drawn 
As he will see who soars long ages hence. 
Earth alters not save in suggestive forms ; 
And it is all it has been to the soul ; 
All it will be — it was not made for heaven. 



PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 47 



XLVII. 

Why should man search amid the darker days 
Of dreary struggles for a meagre life, 
When all the faculties of human souls 
Were straining for existence and for light, 
To learn the path to freedom and to peace — 
The terms on which life best may yield to death ? 
Why listen to the lispings of his babyhood ? 
Not backward into darkness look for truth, 
But forward, with transfigured spirit, catch 
The earliest radiance of the coming dawn 
Of fuller day of final fadeless truth. 



48 PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 



XLVIII. 

The orbit of the world is its great men. 
'T is not complete till all great men are past. 
The poet's perfect world has all within 
In larger song that gives full harmony 
To words the human heart can gladly sing ; 
Not some bewildered echo of the truth. 
When all time's cycle is at last complete, 
The universe like one great instrument, 
Made perfect and attuned by one high hand, 
To harmony shall vibrate undisturbed ; 
And man shall know himself a part of it, 
And see at last how his discordant jar 
Is part of its great concord unperceived. 



PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 49 



XLIX. 
One man of old stands like a mountain top 
Above the time, and all the striving world 
Seems ever since to fret around his feet ; 
And hardly see his face above the clouds 
Forever sunned in the serene of heaven : 
Because our world lay prone beneath his love, 
And saw him highest from our plane of self, 
And felt his loving faith best touched our eyes 
And opened them to an all-boundless love. 
When comes a day that he shall be outgrown, 
The truth he taught the coming fruitage dwarf ; 
When he no more redeems but hinders man, 
Man will have had far higher growth of soul, 
And felt a newer springtime in his thought. 



50 PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 



L. 

Then shape not newer temples for thy thought 
From broken sculptures gathered from the past 
You may not out of ruins rear a shrine 
That will not rather more of ruin be. 
The restless soul need gaze not up for heaven ; 
It is the light through which all things are seen, 
The atmosphere in which they all exist. 
The only avenue to bliss we have 
Is by the calmer byways of our lives, 
In service of our duties travelled well 
With steady foot of kindly household faith. 
The eagle could not poise his wings on air 
Without an eye on earth to steady them. 



PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 5 1 



LI. 



Forbear all martyrdom of man's beliefs ; 

It matters not to earth what man believes 

About the next existence while in this, 

So the brave soul in honesty believes. 

We cannot thwart the ordered course of earth 

By knowing more or less of what it is ; 

Nor can by alchemy anticipate, 

Of this outflowering world from chaos up, 

The final end, — of wither or of fruit. 

So let Truth's workmen unannoyed go on : 

Time swiftly brings us the conclusion clear. 

But in the petty balances of life, 

Whereby we earn and live and fight and wed, 

It much concerns us what our fellows think, 

That help or hinder may our small success. 



52 PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 

LII. 

Conformity is often cowardice. 

Let man stand up and face his fellow-man. 

Away with dead majestic forms of forms ; 

Speak now the truth and the soul's verdict give. 

In the wise future men shall speak of this 

As one among the ages wandered off. 

But few from follies ever stand aloof. 

Let men who look grow wiser as they live. 

Not what a man believes, but what he does, 

Concerns all other men. For our beliefs 

Do not affect the life, or world to come. 

No creed can substitute our duties here. 

The souls of men cannot be swept at once 

Of what the thousand years have died to teach. 

Who sees the whence and whither of this world 

Is in the womb and sepulchre of things, 

Yet would be oracle, aye hides behind 

The fanes ; and speaks as if the statued gods 

Had moved their marbled lips in silence vain 

Till he had their interpreter become. 



PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 53 



LIII. 

Against himself not nature man can sin ; 

Forever he does that which it intends. 

When man shall fail to fill his highest life, 

His aspirations for this world are dwarfed, 

And life's rich fruit drops off ere it matures. 

Though man should mar the manhood in his soul 

The final justice never feels the jar, 

More than tossed pebble of a school-boy's sport 

Can shake the universe's equipoise. 

All things as they transmute themselves to truth 

Lose all of sin's unlikeness that they have. 

The eternal, infinite, and absolute 

Man knows by so much as he has within 

Of Godlike : thus he measure may 

How much of infinite his spirit has ; 

How near eternal is his consciousness. 



54 PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 



LIV. 

Philosophy, religion, poetry 

Blend into unity as grows the soul. 

The creeds are fossil : true religion is 

The just conception of the things that are. 

That church whose best are bigots, yet are true 

To the accepted creed, is false. Give not 

The dead and dry bones of old school-boy tasks 

To the young tooth of hungry liberty ; 

Nor put the dried blood of old, outlived thought 

Into the veins of a new vigorous race 

To breed a pestilence. The world has saved 

These relics for the humanness within. 

There is an idea given a slothful slave 

Will of him after make a noble race. 

Let history tell the doer's deeds and life 

Not capers of the puppets of the age. 



PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 55 

LV. 

The vision peaks that tower up out of life 
See truths are echoes of a voice within ; 
And facts as true as truth, the deeds of God ; 
And books that tell them are his records writ. 
God never did a thing in living works 
To contradict it in a written word. 
The day is near when worship shall be thought, 
And every life shall be a joyful hymn. 
A fountain of full hope unstruck by men 
Deep in the human soul forever lies. 
One moment of pure joy repays a life 
And makes it better to have lived on earth. 
We mount the summit of no year but gives 
Some touch of brightness breaking far beyond. 
Thrice happy is the heart that can so press 
From hours of life their joy, earth's richest art. 
Resolve to conquer what is wrong within 
And a religion has in thee begun. 



56 PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 



LVI. 



Seek thou the law no longer through old lives ; 

Reject their lispings of imperfect truth ; 

In knowledge, go to nature for thy faith : 

So canst thou know the real, living word. 

Ever the truth, despite its angel eye, 

Is known and worshipped only by the true. 

Day after day reveals anew the world ; 

Year after year recruits the human heart ; 

And yet we tread the steady round of life, 

And play with toys our fathers threw away, 

And yield to lures that fooled men long ago ; 

Still in our feelings worship as divine 

The beings by the aged counted myths, 

Or known as thread-bare fictions wrought with 

fact. 
Now man mature must brush the fancy-webs 
Of infancy away, and grasp the true. 



PHANTOMS OF LIFE. S7 



LVII. 

Each day shows newer earth than yesterday, 

And every moon reveals another night. 

Another spring succeeds the one that waned. 

All things that speed them in the groove of change 

Develop into boundless difference. 

We die from earth when those who knew us die. 

This form may be eternal, yet not known 

When separate from present attributes, 

In purer life transfigured and illumed 

By radiance hindered by no earthly air. 

What matters it ; we shall not cast our forms 

Till they obstruct the greater growth of soul, 

And love's attraction, and become a load 

We gladly lighten from our souls for aye. 



58 PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 



LVIII. 

Each hour is capable of joy ; each step 

Leads our lives forward to some bliss ; each thought 

Has in it pleasure hidden ; every pulse 

Is one more rapture counted up to life. 

Duties well done but reconcile this life's 

Opposing features into happiness ; 

And every silent deed of love will swell 

Through years to ocean tides of benefit ; 

And that which guides us surest here below 

Best fits us for a future. Throw not down 

The golden present for a future pearl. 

Go thou through earth but with an eye on heaven ; 

And keep the vesture of thy spirit pure 

By thought lift up to beauty ; and thy heart 

Be sweet with kind remembrance treasured up. 



PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 59 



LIX. 



This earth is to each creature as it sees, 

And ever keeps apace with its own hopes : 

To the worm, a hiding-place from accidents ; 

To the eagle, fields where it may swoop for prey ; 

To man, a foot-path and a soil to dig, 

A place to play his petty passions in, 

And seeking life's small aims forever miss — 

But work, unknowing, nature's purposes ; 

And to the angel-soul, or angel-like, 

A boundless field for pity and for thanks, 

For charity, and unrewarded faith 

In manhood more than any single man. 

Earth's bane or blessing is in thy resolve. 

Fill well the orbit of thy being up 

On earth while here, and leave the glow to God. 



60 PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 



LX. 

All things are perfect to their perfect end ; 
From perfect cause imperfect cannot come. 
Whatever has not harmony is false. 
There is a truth will harmonize all things : 
It ever tends to show the sweet accord 
That joins all things together in their aims. 
The false is always but a part of truth. 
Man's earthly eye can only partly see, 
And discord sees ; but to his spirit-eye 
Some discords blend to concord ; and so faith 
Sweeps on from part to whole and sees 
The glorious aim that unisons all things. 



PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 6 1 



LXI. 

Feel thou the self-hood of the human race, 

The oneness of the conscious creature man ; 

So linked by laws to final unity, 

By aims, by source, by hopes, by nature all, 

That all men are in conscious fate involved. 

Build thou thy faith on science, which is based 

On truth, and which shall yet o'erarch all things ; 

For it retraces, through all subtle change, 

The thought by which the universe was made. 

How ever insignificant seem men 

Beside the truths they poorly represent, 

Each burrowing for himself in search of wants, 

While truth must wait : meanwhile the hopes and 

hearts 
Of men enlist, and grander contest grows. 



62 PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 



LXII. 

There is forever in the immortal soul 

A wild unrest, a hope unsatisfied, 

That throws one after one life's toys away, 

And clings to nothing save it keeps apace ; 

Growing and reaching after something more. 

The love that satisfies and stills must be 

Most keen in sweet affinities of soul, 

Or rich in powers by blessed union given ; 

Or duty drag it from its frantic hopes 

To labor in the steady ways of life. 

How weary one poor wish yet unfulfilled 

Can make the heart ! Yet man has in his soul, 

Beyond all thought, an instinct makes him live ; 

And living love ; and loving deify. 



PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 63 



LXIII. 

Life is a lesson in the art of love, 

That makes our wayward lives religious ; turns 

The deluged heart to a sweet ministry. 

It is the faith that makes life's prayer complete. 

When pure it brings from out the chords of life 

Their fullest music sweetly struck to joy. 

It flashes on the sombre links of life 

And gives it shape and glow of happiness ; 

Its incense given to souls debased in self, 

The dregs but leaves, the perfume goes to heaven. 

It finds its own in other's happiness ; 

And if 't is true must have such qualities 

It will for life knit closer day by day 

The hearts that have its sweet affinity. 

There are in every good, well-purposed life 

Hours when the passions are all kissed to sleep 

By the fulfilment of its happiest hopes : 

Then man is angel if but for those hours. 



64 PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 



LXIV. 

We need no old romance to teach us love 

Or pain and penance full as life may know. 

Is not the earth as green and sunshine bright, 

And winter cold, as in the fabled past ? 

Are not our nerves as tense and sensitive ? 

We cannot better bear the cruel knife 

That cuts life's clinging hope, than they 

Who lived their rough and hardy lives of old ; 

Who grasped as right whatever they could reach, 

And got their title clear by holding fast. 

All nature bids us love and offers joy. 

None knows a life who feels not what it feels ; 

No one is master of a soul whose kiss 

Turns not its deepest sorrow into joy ; 

None may a soul unless he loves it guide. 

The greatest souls are always only great 

To those who loving worship as they learn. 



PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 65 

LXV. 

Ah ! love is oft a phantom island far ; 

Nor ever rightly known from fairy clouds 

Till our hearts wreck upon the reefs of doubt. 

Though from the rocks hope strikes a crystal stream 

It mostly runs through evil-tainted sands, 

Defiled by mixture with the things of fear. 

But if 't is love to have a living joy 

Set in the spirit by each nameless grace ; 

If it be love out of the darkest depths 

Of life grown desolate for want of hope 

To feel a newer life come eager forth, 

Crowned with immortal beauty into joy, 

At whose quick touch this earth's discordant parts 

Are gathered into wondrous harmony ; 

And if the spirit knows its counterpart 

By recognition of mysterious sense, 

Then all life's aspiration touches love 

That is as nectar sipped with luscious lips 

From flowers perpetual found in paradise. 



66 PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 



LXVI. 

Man often gropes through life his awkward way- 
Yet touches not the sympathetic chords 
That make life music : solitude is his : 
His hope is like a mountain lit far off, 
A dark sea unexplored between. 
All things seem ever selfish in their glee 
And whisper him without their pale of joys. 
So foiled all life grows passion-tossed and sad, 
And what should nourish does but sicken it. 
All fireside-lights peer blankly at his step, 
And have no look of welcome for his eye ; 
Until his heart becomes a stony thing 
Like statued apathy around whose base 
The pulse of life with all its joys and griefs 
Forever murmurs with its fretting waves, 
But sees no answering consciousness 
Stir in the staring stillness of its face. 



PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 6? 



LXVII. 

Though there are many passions to the heart 
Ere all the compass of its love be lost ; 
Yet one is purest, crowning crown of all, 
By its twin heart made possible to each ; 
Where every impulse of the soul is met 
By budding wishes of its fellow-heart. 
And those whom nature weds with subtlest tie 
Show themselves mated from the first survey. 
To such concordant souls the world is Spring. 
None master may a soul he does not love : 
We lose ourselves with gravitation glad 
Forever in the souls we truly love. 
Divinest instinct of the soul is love. 
If the tense chord of life sweet music has 
When passion struck, its purest sound is love ; 
That comes as naturally from opening hearts 
As perfume out of morning flowers new-blown. 



68 PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 



LXVIII. 

One should go ever with thee heart to heart, 

Soul leaned to soul, through all this weary life 

Of labor, surfeit, suffering, and surprise ; 

And where thou goest forever unto thee 

The way shall sacred seem when memory 

Can re-illume it for that sake, and it 

Shall be a sacred thought within thy soul ; 

A yearning in the yearning of thy heart ; 

The full completion of thy pictured hope ; 

The image in thy life of all things fair ; 

The inmost thought that will not quit with death. 

The past is memory's, the future hope's ; 

We stand forever on the point between. 

Around us from the dim do spirits rise. 

Would that they could their lips in full unlock, 

Revisit all the souls they loved on earth 

With looks that should be revelation clear, 

And love that ever should be part of life. 



PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 69 



LXIX. 

Love is the very crown of woman's life ; 

Win that completely and her all is thine. 

Her happy soul is overfull of mirth ; 

It hears for aye the Sabbath sound of bells 

On the religious air ; the golden waifs 

That the rich wreck of day strews on the shore 

Of night encircle, aye and splendor it. 

If thou shouldst bind her with unworthy love 

That leads but into the waste marsh of lust, 

And never to the fertile fields of home, 

She goes henceforth with desecrated soul, 

Though turned from thee forever in disgust. 

The gift of freedom is then robbery ; 

And farewell but a buffet to the heart, 

That goes henceforth all disinherited 

Of hope, and joyless evermore in life 

Of all that is not merely hollow glee 

That holds its revel in a vacant heart. 



JO PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 

LXX. 

Are men, reluctant, purposely so made 

To find contentment only in the joy 

That waits on heart-fulfilment, and the full 

Completion in the complement of wife ? 

No other name will gather round the heart, 

In gentle troop, sweet thoughts like that of wife ; 

None call from overpast such memories ; 

None paint the future with such glowing hopes. 

Around her linger thoughts of bridal hours 

Delicious, pure, and dreamy, frail with bliss. 

Ah ! how we tangle up our wilful lives 

By wandering wildly in the dark away 

From home and simpler hopes that after all 

Are sweetest recompenses of our lives ! 

Such truest love in life will make us aye 

Believe in immortality : who loves, 

So loved, on earth may never after doubt : 

Such love sweet nature's glance that opes the soul 

To let a world of joy in evermore. 



PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 7 1 



LXXI. 

How brightly ever in the firmament 

Of every heart stands out the star of home ! 

To homeless be, forever is in pain 

To hear eternal harmony with eyes 

Fixed toward the ever-open gates of far-off joy. 

Ah ! when the soul has of existence grown 

So weary that no charm in friendship lies, 

And doubt looms up a phantom form instead ; 

However self-reliant, then the heart 

Feels need of sweeter power to guide its steps. 

All else is wish that falters short of hope. 

Through all the wanderings of its after-life 

The heart yearns ever for that sweetest spot, 

The mountain-top seen fairest from afar. 

In suffering, solitude it teaches us, 

By sweetly sad remembrance, that this life 

Is empty ever till the heart is filled. 



72 PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 



LXXII. 

He who would make his life a precious thing 

Must nurse a kindly purpose in his soul, 

And with a sunny patience follow it. 

This balanced life so trembles full of fear 

We may not pay a motive for a kiss. 

Life has its language and its fitting time 

For love, life's master, to look laughing on. 

So seek in confidence and you shall find 

A joy so made that it will fit but you ; 

A home where like love's king you may put off 

The cares of daily life, and whisper tales 

Of olden dreams to ears that hear with joy. 

The hero-hearts of life too often break 

Without the sweet reward of victory. 

Go hear the sweet songs of love's quiet homes,. 

For life not colored full of joy and grief 

Can give its own nor others fullest tone. 



PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 71 



LXXIII. 



True happiness on earth is only found 

In the fulfilment of life's duties well. 

All we can know of men is what they do : 

Their aims are all their own. We only know 

An angel by its deeds ; for shining wings 

And brows with glory touched are promises 

That make us question well of him who bears. 

Warm broods the soul over its nest of love. 

Nature seems on the threshold of all joy 

When such well-mated souls together meet 

To wander all the wilderness of life 

In sweet companionship of heart to heart. 

When true 't is the chance poem of an age. 

Thank Heaven they grow no rarer with the years ; 

But every following cycle counts them more. 

The loftiest souls are to their lips in heaven, 

But hardly dare to tell it to themselves. 

What is the wage of life but labor's heart, 

For aye serene, its own unspent reward. 



74 PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 



LXXIV. 

Once many dusky faces, awkward forms, 
And rudely featured, stood together brave, 
And solved the question of their destiny : 
Coarse faces looking as if sculpt from clay 
Into man's image, but as lacking yet 
The sculptor's touch to finish them to men : 
Pure Freedom's statues cut from living stone 
And fashioned into manhood by her hand. 
They held the future in their own right hands : 
Who fears not death is lord of all who fear. 
Then the vile habit of the human race 
That learned to live by using others' toil 
Reluctant yielded all unfit to stand ; 
And men paid tribute in their best heart's blood 
To the mean weakness of their ancestors, 
And paid in war, the wages of a race. 



PHANTOMS OF LIFE, 7$ 



LXXV. 

That soul is poor that takes no note of wrongs 

To others given till it is harmed itself. 

Out of insensibility are tyrants made. 

The soul that 's ever stirred by kind intent 

For its spoiled wayward fellows has alone 

An ever-during beauty in its life. 

Who leads a land should calm and steadfast be, 

Bonfire nor taper, but a tower of light. 

Some lives are made so fine as to be frail ; 

Some souls seem, sea-like, grander in their storms ; 

But he who, strong in his humanity, 

And urged by truth, stands firm against the world 

When wrong, is almost godlike ; and so wins 

A sense of power, and stands as near to God 

As aught may do that is not all divine. 



76 PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 



LXXVI. 

A land shall live if to its poorest just ; 
Nor preaches peace with dagger for its text ; 
Nor leads to war a blinded herd of men 
Who lag forever in the way of truth ; 
Nor can it guide the strife to come that has 
Its ear too quick to catch the clink of gold, 
Nor hands that perish at the touch of toil, 
Nor voice that clank of fetters may o'erwhelm. 
He knows the least, of men that know at all, 
Who thinks he knows the secret of the world 
And understands its deep perplexities. 
Yet men are wiser than earth's cycled years 
And in their little lives have weighed the world 
And found it wanting ; and have judged it so. 
Men quickly leap upon a deed that 's done 
And turn it to their profits ; but the world 
Swings grandly on its way and fate fulfils. 



PHANTOMS OF LIFE. / 7 



LXXVII. 

The shadow of old bondage glooms the earth, 
And man is ever falsest to himself ; 
And yields his freedom to the ancient forms 
That own not man's equality of soul, 
Construing accident into a law, 
And knowing majesty but by its robes. 
Not in subjection of his will can man 
Get his full stature in the realm of truth ; 
But by his bravest self-assertion calm ; 
Though seemingly he thwarts the will divine. 
He is most like his source when most himself, 
And freest from all else that binds his will, 
Except the limits that confine all things. 



7 8 PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 

LXXVIII. 

At last all bondage of the soul must break, 
Unable or to bind or bear the strain ; 
Earth ever bears us toward this grand result. 
Freedom's unfailing fountain deeper lies 
Within the soul than hand of man can reach. 
Each day is bondage nearer to its end ; 
Unbound the universe lives, gladdens, glows 
Full heaven and earth of governed liberty — 
Not frenzied freedom, madly unrestrained. 
The world that breeds unselfishness in one 
Is somewhere worthy in its many lives. 
All feudal forms and aristocracies 
Are selfishness concrete — the barren blooms 
Of once rich gardens into commons lapsed. 
Democracy the germ, uncultured yet, 
Of man's inherent generosity, 
And wiser wisdom than the past has seen. 
And truth well sung to fullest scope shall be 
The epic of man's freedom, whose full sun 
Shall glowing rise on old benighted realms. 



PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 7Q 



LXXIX. 

Earth was not made for nations but for man. 

Wars are the nests where lands their tyrants hatch. 

When every breast is liberty's pure shrine, 

Then will the willing earth be truly free ; 

A hope in whose far light the future walks. 

The test of men and nations is their aims. 

But one man in a thousand knows the face 

Of freedom, which is faith in fellow-men. 

Yet man is ever for true freedom ripe 

Till it has grown a custom of the mind. 

It is the summit of advancing truth 

That crowns with sweetness travail of the past ; 

The harvest labored in old fields of thought. 

Full thanks to Heaven that with each setting sun 

All tyranny is nearer to its end. 



SO PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 



LXXX. 



When woman has her rights, as well as man, 
The senseless boundaries that now limit her 
In love and work and worship will be gone ; 
And wider fields of labor will remove 
The greedy competition that now starves, 
And makes her slave in body and soul to man. 
When woman is made free, and freer man, 
And equal both, then love is possible 
That has no bitter after-taste of lust. 
Then will she be companion unto him, 
And fellow in his loftiest hours and aims ; 
Not plaything in his hours of idleness, 
But helper in the sacred work of the age — 
The work that locks its secret in itself — 
The self-anointed office of such souls 
As ken the secret by uplifted thoughts 
And kindred worship, work, and prayer. 



PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 8 1 



LXXXI. 



'T is not the tyrant but the tyranny- 
Truth hates and battles with. The circumstance 
That makes a soul so brutal it resists. 
How damned with dire disease the world 
That breeds such nightmare shapes as these ! 
Looking at them the earth all monstrous seems. 
Forever man throws down the gage of war, — 
Not unto them which he can well forget ; 
But to the foulness that begets them such. 
The customs of the world its tyrants are : 
Some men can only or conform or fail. 
The world has greater faith in the guarded words 
And sifted judgment of the mighty dead 
Than in the voice of prophet yet alive ; 
Or voice of any one who may write fool 
Upon the full-bound volume of his life. 



82 PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 



LXXXII. 

The soul has hours when it will shrink from earth 
Feel love a fiction ; glory but a gleam ; 
All friendship but the gilding of a cheat ; 
And life a weary wandering ; heaven a hope : 
There seems no profit in the counted years, 
Nor promise in the ages yet unborn : 
The truths of earth so little glorious are 
They make no rainbow with the tears of time. 
Volcanic passions working till they burst 
Heap ever ashes on all human hope ; 
And make earth like a phantom masquerade, 
With shifting change grotesque of life and death. 
The very soul is swollen and benumbed ; 
And all the architecture of its hopes, 
That youth had sunned to glory, vanishes 
And leaves it stripped in ashes, and this life 
Ends in cold questions, and the all of things 
Seems voiceless, empty, and unpromising. 



PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 83 

LXXXIII. 

The common soul may never know the world 

Where wretched genius gropes, though not insane, 

In an unbalanced turbulence of mind : 

The madness and the mastery of a soul 

That 's concentrate upon a hope it cannot reach]; 

Yet clinging to dead hopes as the old moon 

With rim of life clings to her darkened orb. 

The soul is bound until its hungry thought 

Becomes a slave and forges its own chains. 

Through sheer perversity of blinded love 

It oft its worst delusions tightest holds. 

No patient work and blest endurance calm 

By which to build for immortality : 

A morbid soul urged by insatiate hopes 

That make a cruelty of life — the thirst 

Of fevered-wild ambition, such as leaves 

This life unfilled and dies itself unquenched ; 

With not a hope to steer by launched on life ; 

Till vulture passions in voracious greed 

On his torn vitals feed, and outwrung cries 

Of pain convulse and fade from air again. 



84 PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 

LXXXIV. 

Death shoots his arrows by the light of love 

Along our heartstrings till we hardly dare 

To feel them cling lest he strike quickly there. 

Our life's retreat is strewn with dying hopes ; 

Our years depart as guests from banquets go, 

Worn out with revel, falling into sleep. 

The paths of life and death meet at the grave, 

That wave of earth where often love lies wrecked. 

Life's fated links go by us one by one 

But lift the chain from off us nevermore. 

When all life's aim is told, does it but mean 

To suffer for each other and beguile ? 

Man fit to die is fit for nothing else. 

Extinguished hope relit is not again 

That which it was before ; the darkness brief 

Reveals a thousand aspects to the heart 

That color all the new light can disclose. 

Pure sorrow oft is generous and turns 

A deluged heart to sweetest ministry. 



PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 8$ 



LXXXV. 

They feel the deepest sorrow who conceal. 

Deep sorrow ever cannot word itself : 

The deepest never shadows e'en the face 

With tell-tale aspect that a question draws. 

Love ever stands before the cell of grief, 

When it is deep enough to be divine, 

And keeps it sacred with a voiceless mask. 

The voice that seems to come from sorrow's self 

Is ever wrung from self-love by its pride, 

And is indeed but disappointment's tone. 

There is one grief to each soul possible, 

That felt, so equals it eclipses it. 

Then life may cast its hopes as oft the sea 

In anger casts upon the shore its dead. 

Yet plummet-hope cast in the depths of grief 

Will find eternal calm where silence has 

Her shrine, and where the wrecks of joy 

Give a strange beauty to the land of death. 



86 PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 



LXXXVI. 
Fret as we will about our little cares 
And gather sweets for flowerless days of life, 
The steady earth goes smoothly on its way 
And bears us, though unwillingly, to rest. 
When all is done we do but balance up 
This life's account and find there 's nothing due 
The world or us : Death gives receipts in full. 
Who has the present never can be robbed. 
Among the virtues- that do honor man 
Is steadfastness that, having fixed its soul 
On worthy purposes, looks not aside 
Until it works all things to full success. 
Things won by straining have the strain within : 
True souls can win their aims nor lose the truth : 
The world they live in is by such redeemed. 



PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 87 



LXXXVII. 
A man may revel in the wealth of youth, 
And give his heart to hopes of phantom fame ; 
So drink his days up to the dregs of dreams : 
Or love, and see in one fair face the mold 
In which all nature has her beauty cast ; 
Hold fame forever lackey to her smile, 
Until she robs him of himself and youth ; 
Then by life's empty casket so grow man. 
And learning lure him ; and in skeletons, 
And hearts whose throbs have ceased, and forms of 

plants, 
And cast-off shells and crystals find no less 
That life has limits ; each ambition leads 
To where no plummet-thought can bottom find : 
Soul-travail ere a sweet content is born. 
Misfortune often bows us to the dust 
To show us all the gold of life else lost. 



88 PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 

LXXXVIII. 

Man's thoughts are as an angel's, but his deeds 

Are often of the level of the worm. 

Men strut and stagger with their bended backs 

Loaded and smothered with the gilded weights 

That pay no porterage except to pride — 

The weed that flaunts the gaudiest flower of all 

And makes the way-side vulgar with its glare. 

And few can wear a pride that will not be 

A threadbare vanity at every edge, 

And wrinkle life's best laughter with a sneer. 

Some faulty souls rob life of all its worth 

To make their after-death time over-rich. 

Man often walks this earth unstirred, unwon, 

Like a swart stranger on the marts of trade, 

And gazing idly wonders at the jar 

Whose very meaning is to him unknown. 

Earth is not paradise to devil-eyes ; 

From vile imagination's crevices 

Crawl insect doubts that will defile its thoughts. 



PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 89 

LXXXIX. 

Go reverent con the volume of the streets. 

No need to know the custom of the place : 

It is a well-worn crossing-place of earth. 

Who carries in his face a bold intent, 

His welcome makes and for the moment rules. 

For all the idle men confess their shams 

When comes abroad the earnest worker once. 

This world with all its folly knows itself. 

Here breaks the roar of life's tumultuous waves. 

Men catch the floating bubbles of this life 

And burst them one by one and call it joy ; 

Here ignorance rank of men in morbid mass — 

The slime whence cometh every monstrous thought ' r 

Here life becomes a form and law a doubt ; 

Here lives of men flare out in fevered flame ; 

Here penances are emblemed ornaments ; 

Here beauty shows its ugly skeleton : 

The scars of life's fierce fight on every soul 

Are seen ; and in each face the battle gleam ; 

Here many marry and the fewest mate ; 

Here men cook victuals by their altar-fires. 



90 PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 



XC. 



Look thou abroad upon this human sea 

And comprehend the deluge for a truth, 

So one with nature that 't is true for time. 

Here ignorance with all its groping doubts 

And gluttonous greed of monstrous morbid things, 

With seething turbulence from the gloomy past, 

Forever gathers with disturbing force 

On all mankind. Some bravely breast the waves ; 

Some struggle with the fragments of the wreck ; 

Some sink at once to silence ; and a few 

Sit on the hopeless shores in solitude 

And see the waifs of all their world of joy 

In broken shapes of death adrift around. 

How wildly whirling from the stormy past 

The world comes dizzy with its plots and wars 

And clear oblivion of humanities. 

Not strange it yet relapses into guilt 

And staggers from the orbit of the true. 



PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 9 1 



XCI. 



The solace of elysian thoughts comes not 

Unless in the calm solitude of soul : 

And as they truly fabled in old days 

The lonely shepherd's dream was often blessed 

By some fair goddess garmented in light, 

So shall the yearning soul that seeks the sands 

Of living wisdom, from the busy path, 

Asleep with weariness, have his pale brow 

Touched by the fingers of sweet thoughts divine 

That make his weakness holy as in dream. 

At times the soul runs high and strong, and gains 

Upon the shore of its existence far. 

Man, tree-like, must draw vigor from the earth 

To rise in bloom to heaven. Great souls 

Are the strong roots of humankind that pierce 

The universe, and with the thoughts they get 

They make the lives of their dependent souls 

Grow green and beautiful in love's illume. 



92 PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 



XCII. 
Deeds of to-day men laugh at with a sneer, 
Not fitting with the forms that rule the hour, 
Shall speed far-widening down the track of time,. 
And stir the souls of ages yet to come 
With echo of their glory ; and will make 
All hearts play pilgrim with their gratitude. 
The hope that shall unite in brotherhood 
Of emulous strife and labor our sons' sons, 
And be a step in man's advance to good, 
Is now a wish upon the lips of him 
Who bids the world go onward in its course, 
Unguided through its darkness by his voice. 
Man is an infant to the man to be. 



PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 93 



XCIII. 

1 T is they live longest in the future who 
Have truest kept the purposes of life. 
We know not of to-morrow save in hope, 
And in faith's ferry venture Stygian night 
To see its other side ; yet hope is vain 
That is not built on reason's promises, 
And laws of nature by her habits known. 
They best the meaning of the future know 
Who fullest see the features of to-day. 
The wizard hand that writes the deeds undone, 
And dares extort from fate what is to be, 
Must from the fragmentary records read ; 
Unclinch the past, and from its tomb evoke 
Wise, reverent forms, and make them prophesy ; 
And wrench its inmost secret from to-day. 



94 PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 



XCIV. 
He who writes pure the epic of the years, 
Must send his slender cord among the clouds, 
And lure their secret down into to-day ; 
Must trace the comet-orb of final truth, 
Instinct in aim, where shines dim ray of light, 
And sound faint vibrates from creation's work ; 
And from the absolute and fated cast 
The orbit of mankind ; and so project 
Its pathway through the future, and record, 
The obedient earth shall ever after seem 
To travel in the light of what he writes. 
Some deeds are figures that shall reckon up 
The purpose and the progress of the age. 



PHANTOMS OF LIFE. 95 



XCV. 
All the glad stars throw down their jewelled light 
In rapture at His feet ; and sees the moon 
Within the glowing stream a phantom night ; 
The far-off clouds lift, ladder-like, to heaven ; 
The suns which sentinel upon the verge 
Of everlasting darkness lean to God : 
Almost is heard the breath of Him that wakes 
From chords of clay the music of the soul : 
New starry thoughts are in the spirit's sky 
For every strength of eye, as if it pierced 
The curtain that creation hangs about 
The senses, and had caught a living glimpse 
Of the eternal beauty that pervades all things. 



THE END. 









mrn^ 






mm 



m&*- 






&s& 



miam 







